The Reading Room

12:07 AM

0

In the story The Fifth Head of Cerberus, the protagonist has a name which is never stated explicitly, different from the "Number Five" by which his father and aunt refer to him. I told [my father] my name, but he shook his head. "Not that. You must have another name for me - a private name. Y...

TML

1:07 AM

@Randal'Thor I definitely had NOT noticed - thanks for the ping!

Rand al'Thor

Welcome (back) :-D

Hamlet

1:49 AM

@Randal'Thor hmmm, let me find you something.

(It's hard because there really aren't very many good examples of close reading online. I may have to write one myself.)

@Randal'Thor as to how a close reading of a particular scene is applicable to a wider novel, let me see if this explanation works.

Hamlet

2:05 AM

Let's imagine I'm writing an academic paper about a book. The first thing I'm probably going to do is your method: I'll make a list of quotes that are relevant to my argument. After this, I'll probably have some passages or quotes that I want to investigate more closely. Which is where close reading comes in. How many passages I would close read would depend on whether a close reading would help me support my argument...

Once I'm done, I can incorporate the relevant parts of close reading into the final paper. Does that explanation makes sense?

Anyway, still looking forward to your answer on the "Naming of Parts" close reading answer!

Hamlet

2:35 AM

The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan: Did the singer-songwriter take portions of his Nobel lecture from SparkNotes?

BESW

I'd be more surprised if he hadn't, honestly.

(Though, it's likely both Dylan and SparkNotes were cribbing from a third source.)

BESW

6:15 AM

The recent @DCComics & @DarkHorseComics crossover collections feature some really fun stories by legendary creators… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/879568349214105600

Tweeted by CoolComicArt on June 27, 2017 at 5:13 AM

TML

6:29 AM

@Randal'Thor - I used the "spoiler" tag when answering your question about "The Fifth Head of Cerberus". Feel free to edit it to remove them if you feel they are misplaced.

Mithrandir

33

A: Should we assume that questions about a book spoil that book, or should we use spoiler markup?

Honestly, I'm a big fan of M&TV's policy: No Spoilers in Titles Most answers will contain spoilers to someone. There's no way to draw a line that will make everyone happy. If the OP is asking for advice about a book they have not read, answers should be considerate of this and consider putting...

8

Q: Is it acceptable to remove spoiler blockquotes from questions and answers?

We recently discussed spoilers on this site, and the consensus was that while spoilers in titles should be avoided, spoilers in the body of questions/answers were acceptable, and therefore that spoiler blockquotes should be avoided. If someone posts an answer that contains spoiler blockquotes, i...

discussion spoilers

Relevant meta discussions.

Welcome, by the way, @TML! Glad to have you on board!

TML

6:47 AM

@Mithrandir thanks for linking the metas - I actually read that second one, which is what led me to make the comment I did to @Randal'Thor - I'll let them decide whether they think the answer "spoils a meaningful surprise" as I am not a very good judge of these things.

Glad to see @DForck42 is active here - it sometimes felt like DForck42, Ben Williams, and I were the only active people on the previous iteration - I think if you combine the 3 of us, it covers like 95% of the answered questions.

I need to find the cached copy of the previous site's questions and answers - there were some that I spent a LOT of time researching and writing responses which got lost forever because they didn't fit anywhere else.

Mithrandir

Hang on a sec, I can probably find it

@TML sstatic.net/area51/datadumps/052012%20Literature.zip

(I think that's a download link, warning)

TML

Thanks

Mithrandir

7:34 AM

Thanks for bumping the Hobbit question and reminding me that I didn't source my quote, @TML.

BESW

7:57 AM

LINGUIST FRIENDS, THIS A VERY DELICIOUS THREAD! https://twitter.com/nick_kapur/status/879431974657695744

Tweeted by GRAMMARHULK on June 27, 2017 at 7:54 AM

Bookworm

9:57 AM

0

Q: What is happening in issue #1 of "Black Magick"?

The first issue of Black Magick opens with a pagan ritual being done during full moon. A circle member's phone rings, and the ritual is interrupted, and the following panels take place (behind a spoiler because there is some nudity there, but not too much): I should also note that those two wo...

comics greg-rucka black-magick

Rand al'Thor

10:32 AM

@Hamlet That makes sense; thanks. Is there another "term of art" for the process of finding that list of relevant quotes/passages? So that one could answer a question by doing X and then close reading? Also, you said:

> faced with a question about a work of literature, close reading is the first tool that any serious student worth their salt will use to find an answer. Only after a close reading is conducted should more advanced analysis be used.

But now it sounds like it's not necessarily the first tool, at least for a longer work of literature such as a novel.

Bookworm

0

Q: The Old Man And The Sea - why didn't Santiago cut up at least part of the Marlin, and stored them on board of the skiff?

In Hemingway's book The Old Man And The Sea, after catching the mighty Marlin, and coming to the conclusion that the sharks are probably going to consume the entire Marlin - why Santiago didn't just cut up the fish and stored at least parts of it on the board of his skiff? I mean, it's stated t...

ernest-hemingway

Rand al'Thor

@Hamlet It still feels more like an addendum to your answer than an answer in its own right. But OK, I'll try to write something up :-)

Rand al'Thor

10:55 AM

@TML I think that comes under both "90% of the answer is spoiler block" and "for things that can be reasonably argued to NOT be spoilers" (per this meta), so I've edited them out. But thanks for the answer! It's an interesting and unusual thing for an author to do. I'm curious what more evidence there is in the text to support that conclusion.

Also, great to see that you're jumping back into Lit with a bang :-D Some good answers already, and hopefully many more to come!

Shokhet

12:48 PM

@Gallifreyan, I need to read the new answer to your Sosumi question, but I may have to delete mine, upvoted though it is. I think the new answer is mute correct, and the joke is actually funnier the other way.

Need more coffee in me to think right

Mithrandir

3

A: What is happening in issue #1 of "Black Magick"?

Grounding is creating balance and stability in yourself both before you receive and transfer energy when casting a spell or healing and also afterwards, either by shedding excess energy or by replenishing, for example from the earth

Hmmm. Should I comment asking for sources or now...?

TML

@Randal'Thor you should elevate this comment to an "answer"

Interesting question; it seems much has been written about this. There's at least one entire paper dedicated to Eliot's use of The White Devil in The Waste Land. Eliot's own footnote (p. 59 here) encourages the reader to compare the two, but (at least according to Macklin's paper linked above) he later dismissed his own notes as "bogus scholarship". Other references include in Stephen Purcell's study Webster: The White Devil (p. 145). — Rand al'Thor Jun 2 at 12:57

Then I can move my comments onto the answer. :)

BESW

1:04 PM

Fascinating read. Hayao Miyazaki’s 50 favourite children’s books: http://www.openculture.com/2017/05/hayao-miyazaki-picks-his-50-favorite-childrens-books.html

Tweeted by Readitdaddy on June 27, 2017 at 12:49 PM

Hamlet

1:31 PM

@Randal'Thor OK, I may have exaggerated in a misguided attempt to get people excited about close reading.

Rand al'Thor

@TML That question is on my list of things to answer here; I even have a list of useful references for it saved in a text file.

Hamlet

1:43 PM

@Randal'Thor "Is there another "term of art" for the process of finding that list of relevant quotes/passages?" No, not really.

BTW, I know I can't shut up about close reading, but The Waste Land is a poem that lends itself very well to close reading, and any answer about The Waste Land would almost automatically be improved with the inclusion of close reading.

TML

2:04 PM

@Randal'Thor can you move this comment to fi12's answer? I didn't see fi12's answer when browsing the site via the StackExchange app, and I feel like my answer needs to be deleted, but I don't want to lose your excellent cross-link.

Rand al'Thor

@TML Hmm, it's not so relevant to either of the other answers as they don't mention the Exeter Book.

TML

ok

I just deleted the overlapping part of my answer

Rand al'Thor

Possibly relevant: Who wrote Tolkien's riddles? Most of them he made himself in the style of traditional riddles, which have a long enough history that they don't have any hard-and-fast rules as such. — Rand al'Thor 10 secs ago

There, dropped a comment on the question. And now I'm wondering if the second half of that comment could be turned into an answer ...

Gallifreyan

2:26 PM

📷 Neil Gaiman on Libraries and Librarians. https://tmblr.co/Z_5M7s2NAvewo

Tweeted by chrisriddell50 on June 27, 2017 at 2:16 PM

Shokhet

2:40 PM

@TML By the way, do you have a software that makes it easy to look through the data dumps? I tried it once with Notepad (or Notepad ++), but it's not easy.

I don't really do programming, but if I understand things correctly there's no reason why there can't be a software that takes all the data from the dump and arranges it nicely, as it appears on the website. I think that the essential structure of a functional SE site is as the data dump is, with some software on top to make it look nice.

Gallifreyan

@Shokhet It's called Stack Exchange Enterprise, and I think it costs a handful of $ and a proper company to acquire.

Shokhet

@Gallifreyan Lol. That came up in this room a few days ago, IIRC

Gallifreyan

2:58 PM

Mithrandir

@Gallifreyan /me goes to write thing about libraries on Writers meta

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan Why does the fourth paragraph also appear palely behind the third?

Focusing on the important questions here ;-)

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor All questions to the artist :) I'm guessing it's because he stacked two sheets, the inks imprinted, and remained there when he scanned the pages.

Rand al'Thor

Tut tut, careless.

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor You're British - what is it with the British and Brussels sprouts?

> And she made sure that she had always put sprouts on to boil just before a seance. Nothing is more reassuring, nothing is more true to the comfortable spirit of English occultism, than the smell of Brussels sprouts cooking in the next room.

^ From Good Omens. I was considering asking a question about it, but then thought I'd better ask the Brits around.

Or English, whichever is more appropriate.

Rand al'Thor

3:07 PM

I didn't know Brussels sprouts were supposed to be a British thing.

Except at Christmas, maybe.

Gallifreyan

I thought Christmas was for tasty meals.

Shokhet

@Randal'Thor It doesn't say English, really. It says "English occultism." How familiar are you with the magicians in your neighborhood, and their culinary preferences?

Rand al'Thor

@Shokhet I'm pretty familiar with English occultism actually. Or at least more than most people.

I've spent many days in Glastonbury.

In fact, don't we have a native Glastonburian around here in the form of @Chenmunka?

Shokhet

@Randal'Thor Is that a place known for occultism?

Rand al'Thor

@Shokhet You have no idea.

You can hardly walk down the street in Glastonbury without meeting a druid.

Shokhet

3:20 PM

@Randal'Thor That is correct :P

Rand al'Thor

It's the hippy capital of Britain, no question.

Every bookshop is full of books on magic and witchcraft and palm reading and so on.

Shokhet

@Randal'Thor Cool. I saw something about a music festival on Google, so maybe something like America's Woodstock?

Rand al'Thor

You know the legend of King Arthur, when the women take him away on the boat to "Avalon"?

Avalon is Glastonbury.

Shokhet

Aha.

Rand al'Thor

A grave was found in Glastonbury Abbey containing a man and a woman who are said to be Arthur and Guinevere.

Then there's the Chalice Well, where the Holy Grail is rumoured to have been.

Shokhet

3:23 PM

@Randal'Thor My mental map of Britain is something like xkcd.com/1759

Rand al'Thor

> And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon England's mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England's pleasant pastures seen!

Oh yeah, and Jesus is supposed to have gone to Glastonbury as well.

@Shokhet I've heard it compared to Haight-Ashbury because of the hippy culture, but I can't speak to the accuracy of that simile.

Gallifreyan

There's also this bit of Englishness that I don't get:

> Note for Americans and other aliens: Milton Keynes is a new city approximately halfway between London and Birmingham. It was built to be modern, efficient, healthy, and, all in all, a pleasant place to live. Many Britons find this amusing.

What is so amusing?

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan Milton Keynes is a very unusual city, possibly unique in Britain.

I suspect the joke is that Brits don't like their cities to be "modern, efficient, healthy".

Gallifreyan

Ah. Like the self-harm with Brussels sprouts?

Shokhet

@Randal'Thor Wrong side of the country for me.

Rand al'Thor

3:32 PM

in Poisoned room; it is defunct., Nov 6 '15 at 21:05, by Wad Cheber

^ Most British cities are like the second of those images. Except Milton Keynes, which is like the first.

doppelgreener

London is "what is city planning"

Gallifreyan

Sounds like my kind of place, that Milton Keynes.

Rand al'Thor

It feels weird for a Brit to go to a city which is so organised and has perpendicular, clearly numbered streets.

doppelgreener

"sir the whole city burned down, we have the opportunity to do the whole city planning thing paris did as we rebuild" "nah let's just build everything back exactly where it was"

2

Shokhet

@Randal'Thor That's true for most of New York City, but see also Queens (especially Kew Gardens).

Rand al'Thor

3:35 PM

@Gallifreyan This sounds almost like Douglas Adams.

Shokhet

@doppelgreener Lol

Rand al'Thor

@Shokhet Kew Gardens is in London, dammit.

Shokhet

@Shokhet The idea is that streets and avenues are perpendicular to each other. Sometimes, though, streets cross each other in unlikely ways.

Rand al'Thor

These colonials and their name snatching :-P

Shokhet

Oh, and Kew Gardens Hills! There are 3-5 avenues in the 70s with repeating numbers. There's 72nd Rd, 72nd Ave, 72nd Court, etc etc.

@Randal'Thor I have two friends who attended Queens College. One in NYC, the other in the UK somewhere :p

Rand al'Thor

3:42 PM

@Shokhet Blimey, that's confusing.

I've seen buildings number their floors in that kind of way too.

So annoying.

Shokhet

@Randal'Thor I don't even understand what that means.

Although I understand that you guys call the floor above ground "the first floor," right? That's annoying.

Gallifreyan

@Shokhet Which one is that?

Rand al'Thor

@Shokhet Like, floor 3 and then floor 3A (or maybe just "another floor 3") halfway between floors 3 and 4.

Shokhet

@Gallifreyan The second floor. Duh.

Rand al'Thor

@Shokhet Yes.

Shokhet

3:45 PM

@Randal'Thor Why??? :/

Rand al'Thor

@Shokhet Because they refurbished a library and f***ed it right up.

Shokhet

@Randal'Thor ROFL

@Randal'Thor It's the same in Israel. I used to study on the "fourth floor" of a building, but all the newbies constantly showed up to "Floor 3." You only had a chance of getting it right as a newbie if you used the elevator.

Rand al'Thor

No, I'm serious.

It used to be a great library, and now the layout is all confusing and they devoted most of a whole floor to computers.

Libraries are supposed to be for books, fgs!

Foyles was also reorganised recently. (And when I say "recently", I mean "some time in the last 5-10 years". I hadn't been there for a long time until last year.)

doppelgreener

@Randal'Thor not to equate the two situations, but you're making me wonder if there was a point where someone was appalled when an ancient library started storing vellum scrolls instead of tablets.

or if there was some distaste when libraries previously devoted to hand-written tomes started stocking printing-press books

Rand al'Thor

Heh.

doppelgreener

3:50 PM

iirc socrates himself decried the written word as making people stupider

Gallifreyan

@Shokhet Is that what you mean?

Shokhet

@Gallifreyan Yes.

Gallifreyan

But that's good, isn't it?

Shokhet

(from learnbritishenglish.co.uk/…)

Rand al'Thor

@doppelgreener I remember reading a book from the 70s or 80s which kind of predicted personal computers ("one day we'll have a new kind of machine on which we can do everything - listen to music, watch TV, read books, make calls, write letters, exchange information, ...") but not electronic storage ("... and many homes might have a whole room devoted to book-like repositories of information just for us to put into these machines").

Shokhet

3:55 PM

@Randal'Thor That was a very common sf prediction. Look at most of Asimov's computers -- they're all supercomputers, and they're all HUGE. That's the way people thought computers would go, then.

Bookworm

0

Q: Neologisms in 1984

What are some of the most useful or popular neologisms coined in George Orwell's 1984? "Big Brother", "doublethink" and "newspeak" have almost become part of the English vocabulary. What are the some of the others and are they were they all originally coined by Orwell?

george-orwell nineteen-eighty-four

Gallifreyan

@Shokhet Building over here use the British system then, and a far as I remember in Russia they use the American system, which is the opposite of what I'd expected.

Rand al'Thor

However, this can easily be turned into an on-topic question by making it more like this one: asking which Orwellian words are now in common everyday parlance, as suggested by your second paragraph, rather than which were "most useful or popular". If you edit your question accordingly, we can get it reopened :-) — Rand al'Thor 18 secs ago

cc @Mithrandir @Hamlet

Not sure if that warranted being closed so quickly, given its second paragraph.

Mithrandir

It can be reopened just as quickly

Rand al'Thor

But if the OP is susceptible to the idea of editing, hopefully it can get reopened quickly too.

Gallifreyan

4:02 PM

0

Q: Was this done on purpose?

I like to go on various SE sites and read the most popular questions during my downtime at work. I was reading this question about a story with 3:33 being on the clock, a question which intrigued me because one of my best friends has a superstition about that exact number (he was born at 3:33am)....

discussion

Rand al'Thor

@Mithrandir Jinx :-)

Gallifreyan

^ That's an interesting observation.

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan Heh, nice.

doppelgreener

@Randal'Thor nice. :) then again this one still surprises me personally:

Gallifreyan

@doppelgreener So what's the situation in 2017?

Shokhet

4:06 PM

@Gallifreyan Interesting. You're in Turkey, right? Wasn't that a British colony at one point?

doppelgreener

@Gallifreyan we're up to 256gb microSD cards, but no bigger yet

@Shokhet that's just generally true of anywhere

Shokhet

@doppelgreener What, used to be a British colony? Or the numbering of stories in a building?

Gallifreyan

I don't think Turkey was ever a British colony, but it could've been controlled by a coalition of countries including Britain.

doppelgreener

@Shokhet used to be a british colony. :)

Shokhet

@doppelgreener Yes. "The sun never sets" and all that.

(Might even still be true: history.stackexchange.com/a/38397/23904)

Rand al'Thor

4:18 PM

@Hamlet I just edited to reduce some of the repetition, without removing or (hopefully) reducing the impact of any of your points. Let me know if you think it's OK :-)

Rand al'Thor

4:31 PM

@Mithrandir Edited.

And VTROed.

Bookworm

4:53 PM

0

Q: What is the purpose of Owl Eyes in Great Gatsby?

Scott Fitzgerald rarely puts characters or events that have do not either have an underlying message or support in the character development of the lead characters. Therefore I was confused as to what Owl Eyes represented. Clearly he is significant as he is one of the few people to show up to Gat...

character-analysis american-literature f-scott-fitzgerald the-great-gatsby

Feeds

Bounty offered: http://dlvr.it/PQTrhS https://t.co/E3S5sLTbG6

Tweeted by StackLiterature on June 27, 2017 at 4:32 PM

Hamlet

6:33 PM

For your consideration:

0

A: Suggest your Lit.SE reading challenges here!

A Grain of Wheat by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o This is a classic book describing the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya.

Gallifreyan

@Hamlet It's in my uni's library, so have a +1 :)

b_jonas

9:14 PM

I've got this Arany János stanza completely stuck in my head: “Mert hiában tiszta a gyolcs, / benne többé semmi vérjel / Ágnes azt még egyre látja / s épen úgy, mint akkor éjjel. / Oh, irgalom atyja, ne hagyj el.”

Rand al'Thor

9:45 PM

@b_jonas Can you translate for us English-speaking heathens? :-)

Shokhet

9:56 PM

I wonder why literature.stackexchange.com/q/2842/481 was received so very differently from literature.stackexchange.com/q/329/481. Maybe it has something to do with @Randal'Thor's fame?

Rand al'Thor

@Shokhet 1) less carefully worded initially (by a user who has less experience with wording SE questions so as to skirt around POB-ness); 2) negativity towards 1984; 3) mine were also poorly received; both the Carroll and Shakespeare ones were closed and reopened at least once.

Shokhet

@Randal'Thor I was referring more to the votes. The example that I linked to is at +13/-4, and the 1984 one is young yet, but has a net negative score of +1/-2.

2) is a good point, but I think that 1) is probably mostly it. Even now, I think that the quality of the writing in your question is way better than Abhijeet's.

I don't have the time right now, but I wonder what would happen if someone were to edit the 1984 question to have a similar quality of writing. The edit shouldn't substantially change the question; the OP has backed up his assumptions well enough.

Although I don't know if giving a question a major facelift is within the bounds of an appropriate edit. We generally leave these things in the style and voice of the OP unless the post is very unclear as is, or the OP is gone.

Anyway, gtg. See y'all around!

Feeds

Some new answers have been added! There are now five answers to this question. Come on over and check them out :) https://twitter.com/StackLiterature/status/876568974774988800

Tweeted by StackLiterature on June 27, 2017 at 9:50 PM

Rand al'Thor

10:17 PM

@Shokhet The Shakespeare one (my first try, before the Carroll one) was really controversial, and even spawned a meta post whose answers I'm still not happy with.

user15026

11:33 PM

@Feeds some idea of what the question is about would have helped this tweet I think.

BESW

Space Unicorns! ALL IS REVEALED! Behold the Uncanny Magazine Issue 17 Kirbi Fagan Cover and the Table of Contents!… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/879728951731597312

Tweeted by UncannyMagazine on June 27, 2017 at 3:51 PM

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